


Almosts

by seekingsquake



Category: Naruto
Genre: Discord: Umino Hours, Friends with Benefits Gone Wrong, Hooking up, M/M, Umino Hours Winter Bingo, it feels like a break-up fic ngl, the one that got away
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-03
Updated: 2021-01-03
Packaged: 2021-03-12 21:27:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28517148
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seekingsquake/pseuds/seekingsquake
Summary: In his dreams, Kakashi asks him to stay for coffee. He stirs in some cinnamon as Kakashi leans against the counter, his raspy morning voice reciting haikus from a small pocketbook. They tease each other gently, and when Iruka brushes his hair out of his face, Kakashi catches his wrist and says something along the lines of, “I’m glad you’re mine.”In reality, Kakashi tosses a washcloth at him and doesn’t say anything at all.Maybe if they had talked they could have fallen in love. But they didn't talk, and Iruka leaves, and Kakashi doesn't say anything at all.
Relationships: Hatake Kakashi/Umino Iruka
Comments: 16
Kudos: 95
Collections: The Umino Hours Winter Bingo 2020





	Almosts

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by the song [Poetry by Dead Men by Sara Bareilles](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojww_sf9cKE). A huge shoutout to the lovely [stupidbadgers](https://archiveofourown.org/users/stupidbadgers/pseuds/stupidbadgers) for giving this a beta read for me!

“You look good in green,” Kakashi had slurred on that first night they hooked up, his hands, wrapped in his uniform gloves, wide and warm on Iruka’s hips in the back of the bar. In the morning, when Kakashi rolled out of Iruka’s bed, naked except for the mask that might as well have been sewn to his face, he had remembered the sex but not all the things he’d said.

Iruka, who had been drunk but not as drunk as Kakashi,  _ had  _ remembered. And he started wearing more green, in the hopes that he’d get Kakashi’s attention once again.

❅❅❅

The next time jonin Hatake Kakashi hands chuunin Umino Iruka a mission report, there are about fifteen shinobi around them, and the Hokage is sitting three chairs down. At the bottom of the page, which is ripped and muddy, there is a date, an address, and a question mark. They make eye contact for just a moment, and then chuunin Umino says, “Thanks for your hard work, Hatake-san. Everything is filled out... to satisfaction.”

Kakashi gives a lazy two-fingered salute before slouching out of the mission room, whistling.

❅❅❅

Iruka arrives at the time indicated. The location is a decrepit, run-down tea house with no other customers and the oldest man that Iruka has ever seen sitting behind a counter at the back. Kakashi keeps him waiting for fifteen minutes— something Iruka will let slide this once. They drink a cup of tea each, in silence, eyes locked the whole time. When they’re finished, they walk side by side around the pond in the park, shoulders bumping occasionally. 

He wants to speak, to start a conversation because as infuriating as Kakashi is, he’s also interesting, well-travelled, and intelligent. But each time Iruka opens his mouth to say something, he’s silenced by the memory of Kakashi’s hands in his hair and the sound of his voice, rough and sweet, when he had Iruka bent over the side of the bed. 

His body is both hot and cold all over, palms sweaty inside his rainbow knitted mittens. The scarf around his face is damp from his breath. He watches Kakashi out of the corner of his eye, notices the way the cold winter sunlight glints off stray strands of Kakashi’s hair, and yearns. For years, he’s admired Kakashi but was content with maintaining a quiet acquaintance with him, but that changed after their little drunken rendezvous. Now, the ache of his crush is almost unbearable. 

“Maa, Iruka-sensei, would you like to come back to my place? I have a fuuinjutsu theory book that I’d like your thoughts on.” It’s a thin excuse because even though Kakashi may not be the most proficient with fuuinjutsu, he probably wouldn’t need to ask Iruka for help with it. But a thin excuse is all Iruka needs.

“That sounds fun,” Iruka responds, and then Kakashi places a hand on Iruka’s elbow and shunshins them to his room in the jonin barracks.

❅❅❅

In his dreams, Kakashi asks him to stay for coffee. He stirs in some cinnamon as Kakashi leans against the counter, his raspy morning voice reciting haikus from a small pocketbook. They tease each other gently, and when Iruka brushes his hair out of his face, Kakashi catches his wrist and says something along the lines of, “I’m glad you’re mine.”

In reality, Kakashi tosses a washcloth at him and doesn’t say anything at all.

❅❅❅

It goes on. 

After a few months, Kakashi lowers his mask when Iruka comes over because sometimes he wants to nurse some sake, and he knows that Iruka would never tell anyone what he saw. He knows this because Iruka hasn’t even told his closest friends that they’re...

Well, they aren’t  _ seeing  _ each other. So there’s really nothing to say. 

Iruka catches himself staring at Kakashi’s mouth sometimes and wondering what it would be like to kiss him. Even in the heat of things, they aren’t intimate with each other that way. It’s never been said, but Iruka knows that kissing is off the table. It stings a bit, but he won’t push his luck. 

❅❅❅

On Iruka’s birthday, Kakashi takes him for ramen and then rails him in the back alley. They walk back to Iruka’s apartment together, but Kakashi doesn’t come in. He brushes some dust off of Iruka’s vest, says, “Sleep well, sensei,” and then meanders back down to the street.

Iruka stands in the doorway, the skin of his stomach itchy with the dried remains of what he missed when he tried to wipe himself off with a napkin. He leans his head against the doorframe, watching Kakashi walk away, and tries to ignore the panging in his chest.

❅❅❅

Kakashi limps into the mission room and drops a bloody report on the desk in front of Iruka. “You should go to the hospital, Hatake-san,” Iruka says, trying to hide the extent of his alarm. 

“Maa, I just might do that, Iruka-sensei, thanks for the tip.” His visible eye is curved up, indicating a smile, but his voice is flat. There’s no reason that he should, but Iruka feels rebuked. His spine straightens, his shoulders stiffen, and he stamps Kakashi’s report as complete and files it away without another word. Genma quirks a brow at them both from where he’s waiting in line behind Kakashi, but Iruka gives the barest shake of his head. Kakashi limps away silently, not giving his usual salute, and Genma takes his place in front of Iruka at the desk.

“You good?” he asks, casual.

“Right as rain,” Iruka says, taking Genma’s report. 

❅❅❅

They meet in the jonin barracks, acting with the utmost of discretion. Once, Kakashi shoves him into a closet when someone stops by unexpectedly, and Iruka tramps down his chakra signature so hard he feels like he disappears. 

They meet in bar bathrooms and alleys in the dead of night, and only twice more at Iruka’s apartment.

They do not kiss.

A year passes.

❅❅❅

“Is this all I am to you?” Iruka whispers into Kakashi’s pillow while Kakashi pads to the bathroom. He doesn’t expect Kakashi to hear him, but somehow he does.

“Did you want to be more?” he asks when he comes back into the room with a cloth and a cup of water.

The last thing Iruka wants to do is ask for something that Kakashi isn’t willing to give, but he has some pride still. “I’m worth that, don’t you think?”

Kakashi hmms softly but doesn’t speak, and after a moment of silence, Iruka dresses and leaves. He wants to say that he left out the front door and walked to the street without hiding, but Iruka does what he always does and sneaks down the side of the building before running home across the rooftops.

He doesn’t cry, but he does call himself a coward as he stands in his kitchen.

❅❅❅

He tells himself it won’t happen again, but it does, and it does, and it does.

❅❅❅

It’s snowing. The yellow lights from the streetlamps shine off the snow enough that Iruka sort of squints when he looks out the window. He pulls his pants up and starts wrapping his calves when Kakashi says, “You could stay for coffee.” 

Iruka freezes. The single-pane window shudders as the wind pushes against it, and the draft blows across Iruka’s skin. Goosebumps raise over his arms and neck, and he twists to stare at Kakashi, jaw dropped just a little. “Say that again?”

“You could stay,” Kakashi says, blasé. “For coffee.”

❅❅❅

There is no cinnamon. Kakashi doesn’t speak at all, just flips the pages of Icha Icha without a care. 

Iruka is not his.

❅❅❅

The pond in the park is frozen. Children skate across it, and Iruka stands with Kakashi on the bridge above and watches. “I wanted to be in love,” Iruka muses, watching a young girl fall. A boy her age grabs her hand and helps her up.

“With me?” asks Kakashi, his voice coloured with faint surprise. As if he didn’t know. As if the whole damn village didn’t know. 

They’d been discrete with their affair, yes, but Iruka hadn’t been nearly as discrete with his heart. Everyone knew he had a thing for Kakashi. The fact that no one knew they were fucking is inconsequential.

“Stupid, right?” 

A snowflake lands in Iruka’s eye, and he blinks it away. It burns, and he ducks his chin to hide his face. Kakashi is beside him, still and stoic. He could be made of ice, for all Iruka knows. Iruka doesn’t want to do this anymore, and he means it this time. He turns to Kakashi and just looks at him. There is no one around them, on the bridge or the path travelling across it, and no one on the pond would be able to recognize them from that distance. Slowly, as slowly as Iruka has ever moved, he reaches his hand towards Kakashi’s face.

Kakashi tracks his movements but doesn’t try to stop him or avoid his hand.

Iruka curls his fingers around the edge of Kakashi’s mask, and it’s the first time Iruka’s hand has touched Kakashi’s face. He tugs the fabric down, then crashes his mouth against Kakashi’s, and Kakashi surprises him. He kisses Iruka back with intent, with heat; he kisses back so aggressively that it borders on violence. 

It lights Iruka up from the inside out, and he wants to laugh, or scream, or cry, or slap him.

Instead, he pulls away. “It’s too late,” he whispers. “I’m tired of waiting for you to be ready for me.” 

Kakashi says, “I know.” He presses a kiss against Iruka’s brow. Then he pulls his mask back up and walks away. Iruka watches him go. His hands are freezing, but his fingertips still feel the warmth from Kakashi’s skin.

❅❅❅

He wakes up and wanders into his kitchen. Once his coffee is ready, he stirs in some cinnamon and breathes in the scent of it. He flicks through the poetry book he bought himself and pauses over a haiku about how snow gleams in the sun. Iruka reads it to himself slowly, soaking in the words, before getting dressed for the day.

In the closet, his hand hovers over a green long-sleeved shirt. He hesitates but eventually reaches for a blue turtleneck. 

**Author's Note:**

> This fills the "cinnamon" square on my bingo board.


End file.
